onfirmed my belief in the cipher.
After copying the letters on Job's robe I counted them, to make sure that
I had them right. There were thirty-eight; and, just as I finished going
through them, my eye fell on a scratching made with a sharp point on the
edge of the border. It was simply the number xxxviii in Roman numerals.
To cut the matter short, there was a similar note, as I may call it, in
each of the other lights; and that made it plain to me that the
glass-painter had had very strict orders from Abbot Thomas about the
inscription and had taken pains to get it correct.

'Well, after that discovery you may imagine how minutely I went over the
whole surface of the glass in search of further light. Of course, I did
not neglect the inscription on the scroll of Zechariah--"Upon one stone
are seven eyes," but I very quickly concluded that this must refer to
some mark on a stone which could only be found _in situ_, where the
treasure was concealed. To be short, I made all possible notes and
sketches and tracings, and then came back to Parsbury to work out the
cipher at leisure. Oh, the agonies I went through! I thought myself very
clever at first, for I made sure that the key would be found in some of
the old books on secret writing. The _Steganographia_ of Joachim
Trithemius, who was an earlier contemporary of Abbot Thomas, seemed
particularly promising; so I got that and Selenius's _Cryptographia_ and
Bacon's _de Augmentis Scientiarum_ and some more. But I could hit upon
nothing. Then I tried the principle of the "most frequent letter", taking
first Latin and then German as a basis. That didn't help, either; whether
it ought to have done so, I am not clear. And then I came back to the
window itself, and read over my notes, hoping almost against hope that
the Abbot might himself have somewhere supplied the key I wanted. I could
make nothing out of the colour or pattern of the robes. There were no
landscape backgrounds with subsidiary objects; there was nothing in the
canopies. The only resource possible seemed to be in the attitudes of the
figures. "Job," I read: "scroll in left hand, forefinger of right hand
extended upwards. John: holds inscribed book in left hand; with right
hand blesses, with two fingers. Zechariah: scroll in left hand; right
hand extended upwards, as Job, but with three fingers pointing up." In
other words, I reflected, Job has one finger extended, John has _two_,
Zechariah has _three_. May not ther